Representative of the closest known prior art is an article in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin entitled "Flat Wire Feeder" by F. W. Chapin, et al, Volume 21, No. 2, pages 511-12 (July 1978). In this article a feeder tool feeds flat wire, such as wire ribbon, between bonding sites of a printed circuit board or the like. The wire ribbon is fed from a spool through a pair of rollers to an end portion of the tool. The end portion of the tool includes a device for cutting the wire ribbon from its supply spool.
A requirement has been presented to automatically apply strips of acoustical, sound absorbing material to the inside covers of office machines during their manufacture. With programmable robot technology being increasingly employed in the manufacture of business machines it would be desirable to utilize a robot driven tool to apply these strips of acoustical foam material to the insides of the covers of the office machines. However, in attempting to choose a tool from known prior art devices, such as the flat wire feeder described in the publication referenced above, certain shortcomings in these prior art tools are apparent. For example, in the publication referenced above, a bonding device to bond the flat wire to the printed circuit board is suggested, but not shown. Such a bonding operation in the concept of this publication seems to be a separate operation unrelated to the feeder tool operation shown and described. In applying the strips of acoustical foam it became desirable to place adhesive on the work piece and then place the acoustical foam atop the adhesive so that the adhesive could form a bond between the acoustical foam and the work piece. Thus, bonding could not be accomplished as suggested by the publication, as a step in the process to be accomplished after the strip material is placed in its bonding position relative to the work piece. In view of these kinds of shortcomings the wire feeder described in the publication could not be readily utilized for the attachment of strips of acoustical foam material inside the covers of office machines with the assistance of robotics technology.
It would, therefore, be desirable to have a tool and technique for automatically applying a length of elongated material to a work piece from a supply of such material in which a quantity of adhesive is deposited onto the work piece and means are provided for engaging the length of material to the adhesive, and, therefore, the work piece, and for separating the length of material from the supply of such material.